Live conversation with Musk

Trump on “coup” and “nuclear warming”

Donald Trump has a big supporter in Elon Musk. The interview on his platform X was of course not an overly critical one.

(Bild: APA/Getty Images via AFP/GETTY IMAGES/Michael Ciaglo)

A highly anticipated live conversation between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and X CEO Elon Musk took place on Tuesday night. Due to a technical glitch, the start was delayed by more than 40 minutes. Nevertheless, the two celebrated their "record interview" with more than 1.3 million viewers, in which Trump spoke about a "coup" among the Democrats and the danger of "nuclear warming", among other things.

The start of the event was delayed by more than 40 minutes as many users were unable to access the livestream due to technical problems. Musk claimed that it was a so-called distributed denial of service attack (DDoS attack). This involves a server being deliberately overloaded with a flood of requests. However, this suspicion has not yet been confirmed.

Elon Musk can well imagine playing an important role in Donald Trump's next cabinet.

(Bild: AP)

At the beginning of the interview, Musk praised the former president for his bravery during an assassination attempt in July, when Trump was hit in the ear by a bullet. "I knew right away it was a bullet. I didn't imagine that much blood could come out of the ear," the 78-year-old recalled. 

Musk offers to work in the next Trump administration
The Tesla boss, who announced his support for Trump after the incident, praised the former president several times for his steadfastness and courage. Trump announced that he would return to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the attack, for a rally in October. Musk, in turn, offered to work as an advisor in a possible Trump administration. He would be happy to help use taxpayers' money more efficiently and save money as part of an "efficiency commission", according to the world's richest man.

Later, Trump claimed without evidence, among other things, that Russia would not have attacked Ukraine if he were still president. He praised authoritarian leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

Trump angry about Democratic candidate swap
During the interview, Trump expressed his displeasure that Vice President Kamala Harris will run as the Democratic candidate for the presidential election in November instead of President Joe Biden. He falsely described this as a "coup" and claimed that Harris had not given an interview since this "deception" began. Trump had overtaken Biden in many polls in the battleground states that are likely to be decisive for the outcome of the election on November 5, but is now behind Harris in some of these states.

Kamala Harris is catching up in important US states. This is probably one of the reasons why Donald Trump does not like the Democratic candidate swap.

(Bild: APA/AP)

"Sustainable" CO₂ emissions
Although he is the founder of a company dedicated to the fight for the electrification of transport, the Tesla boss warned in the interview against "demonizing" the fossil fuel-dependent industry and its employees. He also put forward the hair-raising theory that the current level of global CO₂ emissions is "sustainable for the next few decades". Only a drastic increase would lead to problems. Trump, who denies man-made climate change and would probably undo numerous climate protection laws from Joe Biden's time in office, stated in this context: "Nuclear warming is a bigger threat than global warming."

It was not clear from the conversation exactly what the former president meant by this. However, Trump repeated his thesis several times and also said that nuclear power was dangerous. After a brief discussion about the advantages, disadvantages and dangers of nuclear power plants, the 78-year-old toned things down a little and only said that this form of energy generation should be called something else: "It's a branding problem."

Trump: "Am I getting paid for this?"
Musk had advertised the conversation as an "interview" with Trump. In the end, however, it largely played out like one of the ex-president's campaign appearances. Trump claimed that around 60 million users were listening to the livestream - while the number of 1.2 million listeners was displayed for all to see. "Am I getting paid for this or not?" joked the campaigner at the end.